Archives for Cogitating
June 27, 2007
In September 2006, a group of African American high school students in Jena, Louisiana, asked the school for permission to sit beneath a “whites only” shade tree. There was an unwritten rule that blacks couldn’t sit beneath the tree. The school said they didn’t care where students sat. The next day, students arrived at school to see three nooses (in school colors) hanging from the tree.
It gets worse. Read the rest over at While Seated.
Appalled doesn’t even begin to cover how I feel about this.
February 28, 2007
Not a new concept, and in fact one of the legitimate uses frequently touted for a protocol that is admittedly usually used for distributing content of questionable origin. But I bring it up today because Parallels Desktop for Mac is now out of beta, and after three attempts to download the ~58MB disk image from the Parallels web site that each timed out after fifteen or so minutes, I found a torrent for it. Using the torrent, the disk image downloaded in 11 minutes.
There are still some significant hurdles to getting BitTorrent into use by non-nerds: Configuring your router and your client to actually achieve that kind of speed requires some fiddling, the nomenclature is awkward (“torrent”, “seed”, “leach”, “peer”, and “tracker” all make some kind of sense, but don’t relate to anything in the Internet experience of most casual users), its reputation is that of a “pirate-ware”. But distributing something like Parallels, which so squarely aimed at nerds, should be a no-brainer.
February 5, 2007
For Micki, and by proxy, Violet Blue.
I guess I could have used Beavis and Butthead, too.
July 2, 2006
Ted Stevens goes off the rails while arguing against net neutrality. I’m sorry, folks. I didn’t vote for him. I didn’t vote for the annointed daughter of the drunk frat boy that became our governor, who I also didn’t vote for. These politicians are not representative of all Alaskans.
February 6, 2006
It’s taken me a while to actually do the deed, but today I handed in my letter of resignation at the Anchorage School District. As of February 21, 2006, I’ll be under contract with Mule Design as Lead Developer.
I’m really excited about the chance to work full-time with these folks. I’ve been doing small part-time jobs for them since September, and it’s gone very, very well. That part-time work has given us the opportunity to get to know each other and to figure out how we’re going to work 4,000 miles apart. Yes, that’s correct. Katie and I are staying in Anchorage. We bounced around the idea of moving down there, but ultimately Katie and I decided that we couldn’t move down there as quickly as Mule and I wanted to start working together, so the team at Mule very graciously agreed to try a long-distance contract. So far it’s working very well. It helps that we’re only one hour apart and that San Francisco is pretty easy to get to from Anchorage, but it’s still a huge gesture of faith on their part, and it’s very appreciated.
Continue reading "Time for a Change" »
February 1, 2006
While I was puzzling over a CSS problem, Nadav wondered if there might be a “crapulent” way to fix it, maybe by adding a <div> wrapper or something. And then I found my new job description.
January 16, 2006
Yesterday, for the first time that I can remember in my life, I got a haircut before I really needed to. First flossing daily and now this. For me 40 is not the new 30, 40 is the new 12.
January 4, 2006
“In Action” is not a good name for a newsletter, no matter how you write it, because when someone says it in his or her head (or to someone else, for that matter - “Hey, Frank! Did you see the last issue of Edify In Action?”), it will always sound like “inaction”. And if you do a haphazard job with the display, like Edify has done here, it’ll even look like it. This is doubly true if the development of your main product is glacial.
December 21, 2005
So the Senate managed to stave off another attempt by our senior senator to shove ANWR drilling down our throats. My prediction is that Ted Stevens will die on the Senate floor some years down the road with an ANWR rider clutched in his cold, dead hand (and wearing his Hulk tie).
December 21, 2005
I made this from an animated GIF that I found out there somewhere. I just added the hat and the words. The band did all the work, being all spooky and badass. If someone knows who this band is, please leave a comment. Also feel, free to share it around.
November 3, 2005
Not just iPods, actually, but that’s what made me think of it. My computer does it. My VCR does it. I’ve had watches that could do it. Why can’t my iPod? Any device that contains both date and time and has some embedded programming capability should know that it needs to change its clock when we enter or leave Daylight Savings Time. For example, my iPod should be smart enough to know that if I set my time zone to “Alaska”, it needs to adjust on the correct days. I shouldn’t have to go into a separate menu and change my time zone from “Alaska” to “Alaska (DST)” or back. That’s particularly stupid, because why not just go in and change the hour by one click instead of changing the time zone? It couldn’t take that much more programming.
May 17, 2005
RV Public Relations
Originally uploaded by David McCreath.
Because who doesn’t want to see an INTRUDER pull into the camp site? Especially if the driver is 2 SEXY.
This was parked on the Spit in Homer.
April 13, 2005
I just got back from a cleaning and checkup, and I’m so happy I could squeal. For the last four years, I’ve been on tri-annual cleanings instead of semi-annual to keep my borderline gingivitis under control. Starting the day of my last cleaning, I was determined to get back to a semi-annual by flossing every single day until my next cleaning. I very nearly hit that mark. I missed seven days total.
But the hygienist was seriously impressed (there was actually some improvement on a couple of teeth) and even though I still have one tooth with a 6mm gap (which is their normal flag for tri-annual vs. semi-annual cleanings), she said we could give it a shot and see how it goes.
So I go in next Monday to replace the last of my rotting, cracked metal fillings and then I don’t have to see the inside of my dentist’s office for six whole months. I haven’t been able to say that for four years.
March 18, 2005
Just to go on the record as an Alaskan, I believe that drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is wrong.
- There’s not enough oil there to provide anything but a last gasp to the epoch of fossil-fuel power.
- What is there won’t be available for several years to come.
- The money that will be sunk into drilling there could produce alternate energy technologies that no one has even imagined.
- There are plenty of places left on the North Slope that are not protected habitat.
I wish I could figure out a way to express how important I think it is that some parts of the earth remain unexploited. I mean I wish I could express it in a way that would change someone’s mind.
I’m afraid that in my lifetime the majority of humanity will have reason to regret the way we’ve treated our home.
I’m riding my bike to work as often as I can.
